


Weather Patterns

by flecksofpoppy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Character Death Fix, Childhood Friends, Getting Together, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-04-20 09:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21963562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: Jean attends an unexpected funeral in the rain and looks for answers.
Relationships: Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53
Collections: JeanMarco Gift Exchange 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [commodorecliche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/commodorecliche/gifts).

> Hope you enjoy this, my friend! I often have trouble working with AU prompts, but this one was actually right up my alley. <3 Merry Christmas!

It’s raining on the day of the wake, the kind of day where the weather matches the mood: the day Marco Bodt is laid to rest.

Jean stands outside the funeral home, staring at his own reflection in the door as he smokes a cigarette. It’s rare he smokes anymore except in moments of severe duress, but he thinks it’s warranted in this case.

It’s been a year since he spoke to Marco at all, his childhood best friend.

Two things spring to mind along with the cigarette smoke drifting in Jinae’s startlingly clean air.

The first: when he tried cigarette with Marco. 

At age thirteen, Jean was already getting in trouble regardless of the fact he got good grades, an overachiever with a propensity for wanting all the things he thought made someone cool. At thirteen, Marco was nervous and good, still too young to question any of Jean’s plans.

They’d climbed one of the large trees in the woods outside Trost High School to hide and exchanged a single cigarette back and forth. Jean had stolen from his mother’s purse and was eager to try it.

Marco had taken one drag and coughed so hard he’d almost fallen out of the tree, so Jean had finished it. Thus began a series of years that started with Jean trying to convince Marco to do things against the rules gradually evolved to Marco lecturing him triedgoody, but Jean only ever said so if they got into an argument and his feelings were hurt.

Jean was definitely more an asshole when he was young.

The second thing that he recalls is more recent: a email sent over a year ago.

_Hi Marco,_

_Long time no talk. I finally quit smoking, if you can believe it. You were right when you said it was going to kill me. I finally took your advice._

_How’s life in Sina these days?_

_-J._

Ironically, Marco was dead soon after; not from anything that was his fault, but by a moving train. Freak accident, nothing for a lawsuit, a trip from the platform onto the tracks as a train roared into the station.

Jean inhales hard and holds in the smoke.

Marco hadn’t written back to the email. Jean is sure it wasn’t out of spite or resentment, but something as simple as the passage of time.

Bad decisions—worse than smoking in trees in high school and getting addicted to nicotine.

They shared a lot of things in those trees: conversations, secrets, lunch, one cigarette at thirteen, and one kiss at eighteen. Singular events that never repeated themselves, and somehow faded like smoke into the background, even after they reunited in Trost for a short time between college and adulthood.

Jean is still mildly confused about why they brought the body back to Jinae, since the Bodt family had moved to Trost some time before.

This question is quickly answered when Jean finally forces himself to go in.

“Bodt?” says a respectable looking woman wearing a dark color, not black, but neatly buttoned up, smart, professional. “Right through here.”

There are dozens of people in the room—a kaleidoscope of a genetic pool ranging between a few different features, and a lot of freckles—and Jean finally remembers how much extended family Marco actually has in addition to his seven siblings.

It’s open casket, but Jean can’t look. It’s too weird, and he already has a memory of Marco he’d prefer to keep in his mind’s eye. He hasn’t conjured it up in awhile, but he does now as he spots Marco’s mother.

It’s been far longer since he’s seen her than the last time he talked to Marco, but as soon as she spots him in the room, she waves her hand, her expression emotional and surprised as her eyebrows raise plaintively.

“Jean,” he says his name simply, and it reverberates through his chest like an earthquake as everything inside him finally starts to crack, a great force that splits his center. “You came.”

She hugs him, asks how his mother is, remarks she’s so happy he made the long trip to Jinae, if not surprised.

“It’s a long trip from Trost.”

Jean tries to smile and shrug, rubbing a hand against the back of his head. “Yeah, well.” There’s nothing else to say really.

Well. A word to start a sentence that has more to it; but in this case, not.

*

Jean doesn’t know any of Marco’s extended family well, and he arrived after brief remarks were made during viewing hours. 

But he does run into Marco’s older sister outside after everyone is leaving. A few aunts and uncles make plans to get dinner around the corner, a local place that apparently their family has frequented in the area for generations.

“So,” she says around a Marlboro light, ashing her cigarette into the street gutter from where she’s standing on the sidewalk, “you finally showed up.”

Jean shoves his hands in his pockets, unsure of how to proceed with this conversation.

“We’ve talked on and off over the years.”

She just shrugs a little, though it doesn’t seem angry. Her brow is furrowed as she seems to think this over, puzzling as she takes another drag.

“Smoke?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Marco told me you quit.”

That gets Jean’s attention, and he looks up in surprise as she hands over a cigarette.

_ “My sister will kill me if she finds out we’ve been smoking,” Marco’s dark eyes are round and legitimately terrified._

_Marco’s sister was eighteen and just out of high school, full of sass, ambition, and nicotine. Protective hypocrisy also definitely fit her personality._

_“Whatever,” Jean had scoffed as they walked home from school together, puffing on cigarette. “I’ve been the one smoking, not you.”_

The memory is strangely vivid. Of course, when she’d caught wind that anyone at all had been smoking around her little brother of fifteen, there’d been hell to pay.

All three of them were stupid kids back then.

“I did, mostly,” he finally replies, accepting the cigarette and reaching into his back pocket for his lighter. “I don’t do it much anymore, but I came prepared.”

She lets out a wet hoarse laugh, shaking her head and stuffing the cigarette between her lips, eyes closed. “I don’t think there was a way to come prepared. I hope it helped.”

“It didn’t.”

They stand there and smoke in silence for a few minutes. The rain has stopped, but the sky remains a January gray, the air heavy and strangely humid despite the cold. It should be snowing, really, but that would be too much poetic justice for Jean to handle in one day. Marco loved snow, and insisted on going out during the first snowfall every year when they were roommates after leaving college.

The city always seemed dirty, but he’d drag Jean along early in the morning, pointing out different things that signaled it was truly winter: window displays for the holidays, pristine snow in the park that no one had trudged over yet, the window sills and rooves that were white and undisturbed before the hustle of the day got started.

It wouldn’t be right if it were snowing on the day that Marco was laid out like a doll in a coffin, made to be strangely ogled by curious onlookers instead of getting up and walking out to find something better to do.

Marco was always nice to almost a fault, but he didn’t take shit. That was one thing that was their glue for so many years—when Jean’s personality got particularly sour, Marco’s stiff upper lip canceled it out almost effortlessly.

“You two had a really unique dynamic.” His sister’s words startle Jean back into the present and he looks up in surprise. “He told me that you emailed him and said you’d quit smoking.”

“He never wrote back. I think he was really busy.”

“Yeah, I guess. But you know, you don’t really realize how long it’s been until you run out of time, huh?”

“Was he angry at me?” Jean blurts out. “Do you know? Or was he just busy, uh, I don’t know…” he trails off, shoving on hand into his back pocket and taking a long drag of his own cigarette. “Getting engaged, having kids, buying a house in the suburbs? Like everyone else we know from high school?”

“Marco was never interested in that stuff, at least not as a goal, as far as I knew,” she replies noncommittally. “I think he’d probably have prioritized a reply if he’d known a train was going to take him out.”

Jean laughs hollowly; the Bodt family has always had a macabre sense of humor, and he lets her have the joke. She needs it more than he needs to not hear it right now.

“You two danced around each other for years,” she finally says. The white elephant in the room—or at least the smoky air between them—has been shot right in the heart. “I never really understood that.”

Jean snorts a little. “Me either. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to figure it out and stay in touch.”

They both go quiet at that, thinking, though it’s a comfortable silence.

“Sometimes things just don’t work out,” she says after a few minutes, shrugging as she grinds her cigarette out on the ground. “I guess that’s life.”

“Well, ‘life’ is also your brother getting hit by a train for no reason,” Jean retorts. “So fuck that bullshit saying. It’s what you say when you don’t know how to explain something, and this has no explanation. It’s not fair.”

He knows his voice is getting louder, and he throws his hand up. “We shouldn’t be standing here while he’s…” he stammers and he clears his throat hard, “when he’s in _there_ lying in a box. He should be out here, talking to us.”

She gives him a hard look, studying him for a moment. “I forgot how blunt you are,” she replies calmly. “Thank fucking god.”

He’s hugging her before he even knows what he’s doing, and then she’s crying silently into his shoulder.

Suddenly, he’s struck with the distinct sensation that he’s being watched with great interest. When he looks up, though, expecting to see a nosy extended relative interrupting their private conversation, there’s no one in the street.

Evening has settled and the few streetlights that Jinae has have turned on, yellow light cast down sickly on the wet pavement.

Still, there’s no one there.

Jean sighs and hugs her, united in misery and memory.

When they part ways and say goodbye, she asks him to keep in touch.

He says sure, with absolutely no intention of following through. There’s really no reason, and although Marco’s sister has never been the type to pay lip service to social niceties, it’s obvious she doesn’t even know what she’s asking. Just that keeping in touch is important, and that their conversation meant something about how to live one’s life. Maybe some desperate attempt to reconcile the accepted fact that Marco’s death was completely and utterly pointless and illogical; versus the need for order amidst chaos.

Marco and his sister were always very close. Jean wonders what they talked about in the last few years. It seems, on occasion, it might have been him. He’s not sure how that makes him feel, especially since Marco won’t be doing anymore talking anytime soon.

*

The train ride back is three hours of memory assembly, pulling together bits and pieces of the past that Jean can recall in some kind of meaningful order to string together one coherent piece.

Sixteen in summer: sandwiches (for Marco) and cigarettes (for Jean) sitting in trees even when school was out. It was their place for escaping the heat on the ground, other people, the world.

Seven in the autumn: third grade art projects ruined by unkind peers, a kid with freckles wielding an earnest defense system of: _ “Leave Jean alone or else I’ll tell my sister.”_

Twenty-two in January: temporary roommates when Marco pulled Jean out to look at the snow. Christmas a few times together when there was a blizzard. Marco’s gift for him that first year was a sketch pad despite the fact Jean tended to hide the hobby.

By the time he disembarks at Trost Central Station, he realizes that he has only enough beads of recollection to fill half the strand of a necklace. He needs more substance, more information, and suddenly this clear and present goal, this attainable necessity, is front and center at his mind.

When he steps onto the street, it’s raining again as if the storm followed him. 

The walk to his apartment is short, thankfully, since he forgot his umbrella and he’s not wearing the right type of shoes to be trudging through puddles. It’s also late and damp, and he wants nothing more than to take a hot shower and fall asleep. The day has exhausted him to such an extent that he wonders if he could sleep like the dead too, and in some strange state, he wonders idly if there’s some other way he could meet Marco again in some way to connect the thread from the last real memory he has. 

Or at least, to get that information he wants: completion, maybe closure.

He’s lost in thought as he unlocks his mailbox, grabbing the small stack of envelopes inside—mostly bills and credit card offers—and absently rifles through them as he climbs the two flights of stairs to the apartment.

Thankfully, he’s already halfway through the door when he finally notices the hand-addressed card and festive envelope.

But it’s the return address that causes the envelopes to fall to the floor of his apartment like flightless birds: _Marco Bodt._ A street address somewhere in Sina. 

The postmark is from two weeks ago, and Jean curses quietly. Marco didn’t put his apartment number which probably held the envelope up in delay, but somehow, it did still reach him.

He holds the card gingerly in his hands, staring at it as he blindly walks over to the stove, dazed as he turns on the burner to heat up water for nighttime tea. He already knows he’s going to have trouble sleeping after the day, despite how tired he is.

But now his attention is riveted on the piece of unassuming mail clasped in his hands.

The envelope is red with a slight shine to it with Marco’s unmistakable handwriting neatly printed on the front. Probably a card selected for its aesthetic qualities while not being overly expensive.

It takes a few minutes and Jean relocating to a sitting position for him to even consider opening the envelope. 

When he finally does, he opts to use his pocket knife to carefully slice through the top so as not to tear it badly. He’s not sure if he’s going to toss it or keep it safely hidden away under lock and key, but he doesn’t want to ruin it either way.

The card itself is simple and emblazoned with a snowy city scene, simple yet very Marco.

Jean swallows hard as he slowly opens the card and stares at the handwritten message inside, not allowing his brain to process the words as any symbols with meaning for a moment, admiring these marks that Marco’s living hands made before a week ago.

Reading feels like looking directly into the site of a bloody car crash, but he does it anyway.

_Happy holidays, Jean! It’s been awhile, but I’d love to see you. Maybe we can get together in Trost for old times sake? Or you could come here, if you don’t mind. Sina is pretty this time of year. Feel free to just show up even!_

_Anyway, I hope you’re doing well. Merry Christmas!_

_Yours,  
Marco_

Jean just stares at the card until gently closing it and setting it down on the countertop. The kettle is screaming and he turns to turn off the burner, feeling numb.

He makes it halfway to the cupboard with his favorite teabags before he covers his face.

The sounds he makes are embarrassing, wet, desperate sobs into the void, alone in his apartment over cheap teabags and a card from a best friend he left drift away, the best friend he was in love with as a younger man. Maybe someone who he could have loved later, if only he’d had a conversation, gotten the mail on time, written another email. Anything.

But he didn’t, and _that’s life._

By the time he’s lying in bed, freshly showered and staring at the ceiling with the card slipped carefully into his nightstand drawer, his thoughts have returned to that evidence. Process documentation of Marco’s life to fill in gaps in Jean’s own knowledge and memory.

Who was Marco Bodt while writing this card? Why did he only send one this year and not before? Why did he not write back to the email?

Just as he’s about to fall asleep, Jean’s eyes pop open and he sits up in bed abruptly, the springs squeaking at the swift movement.

He rolls over to fumble in the drawer, turning on the light at the same to re-examine the envelope.

Marco’s address. The place he lived and sent this card from.

On a whim, Jean grabs his phone and googles the address. It’s been less than a week since the accident, and he has a hunch; sure enough, a listing for Marco’s apartment number pops up on a real estate website immediately.

Sina’s real estate is in high demands, and if there’s one thing that’s as sure as death and taxes, it’s that an empty apartment will not remain vacant for long.

Jean fires off a quick email to the broker listed on the website. He’d like to see the place, a young professional currently residing in Trost looking for a location closer to his job. All a complete fabrication, but he figures it sounds better.

For some strange reason, when he slips the envelope back into the drawer, puts his phone away, and turns out the light again, he’s able to sleep.

Marco may not be able to give him any answers from beyond the grave, and especially the meaningless ones that jean wants to know: where he went for coffee, whether he had any hobbies like a book club, if he threw away his junk mail regularly, and if he still cuts up the Christmas cards people send him to use as gift tags the following year.

He needs to see it in person, and he has not doubt in his mind that the possessions of a dead man that have yet to be cleaned out will stop a Sina real estate agent.

When he wakes up in the morning, he’s not disappointed. There’s an email already asking him to make an appointment with a mention of a fee and inquiry about what he does for a living. He types out something that sounds good on his phone and offers to undergo a background and credit check, which definitely makes it sounds more legitimate.

He has an appointment to see his dead childhood best friend’s apartment that same day. Thankfully, the train ride to Sina isn’t too long; but it also makes Jean feel worse.

Years of silence between him and Marco, and only thirty minutes actually separating them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this in 2019 for JMGE and I apologize for the long time coming it's been! Thank you for everything, L... your commitment and professionalism to this project in 2020, your amazing support, and such fun times IRL. <3 I hope you like this conclusion.

_ “Hey, do me a favor, Jean?”_

_Marco is almost done putting the things bound for college into boxes._

_“Yeah?” Jean asks from just outside the window, exhaling smoke in the opposite direction. He’s sitting on a small portion of roof adjacent to Marco’s bedroom that covers the garage._

_“Will you write to me, when you’re at your school?”_

_“What?” Jean chuckles, angling his face down so he can meet Marco’s eyes through the glass. “You mean like postcards? We’re not on vacation, Marco.”_

_Marco snorts through a smile, half his mouth lifting. “No, like, letters. Old fashioned ones. I want you to text me and email me too, but I like letters. They’re things you can keep.”_

Jean wakes with a start to a mechanical click-clack of a train. It’s different than the Trost metro, a bigger train altogether, and then he remembers where he’s going.

Sina is a world away from Trost, yet a world is an hour in real time. Nonetheless, Jean had managed to dream on the light rail.

Marco’s Christmas card and envelope is sitting in his lap, the card itself still clutched in his fingers where he’d been holding it, reading and re-reading the simple greeting over and over, as if some secret could be unearthed in the simple letters. Hieroglyphs to explain why they died before they could talk again, regardless of how illogical.

The dream is a memory he’d actually neglected to conjure in his gathering the day before, and he hones in on it now.

It was just before they both went off to college, and Marco had asked him to write the old-fashioned way people did when postcards and letters were the only things that could connect people going a far distance away.

Jean had loyally for the first two years; Marco had written back. Communication waxed and waned before they became roommates after college; and then it had waxed and waned again after they got jobs in different cities.

Maybe the people a century ago had it right: maybe writing is the best way to stay in touch, requiring effort, mindfulness, dedication, care.

“Next stop, Sina City Central Station!” The voice reverberates throughout the car. People begin to gather up jackets, umbrellas, and shopping bags in anticipation of disembarking the train.

Jean didn’t bring much with him, and as always, no umbrella. He actually has several somewhere in his apartment, but he always forgets.

Nonetheless, he doesn’t mind the light sprinkle as he walks from the train station to the apartment building where the agent said they’d meet. Marco’s apartment building, not just any old building.

He’s not sure he’s ready to see what his best friend has been up to the year between his email and the Christmas card, and even before that, but it’s a one-time opportunity. He knows very well that they’ll have the apartment cleaned out and cleared by the end of the week.

The streets are easy to navigate, and Marco’s block isn’t hard to find.

He tries not to imagine how easy it would have been to come here had he ever bothered to properly reach out.

As he approaches the middle of the block, a voice calls out across the street.

“Mr. Kirschstein?” A well-dressed woman peers at him from under the awning curiously where she’s standing, giving him an up-and-down before nodding. Apparently, he passed muster to be in Sina and looking at an apartment in Marco’s building. Probably a good move that he’d worn his nicer jeans and jacket.

“That’s me,” he answers as he jogs across the street to meet her. “I’m here to look at the apartment, moving house from Trost to be closer to work. I’m a freelancer and I have a contract with Survey Corp. for technical research.” He shrugs a little, settling into the lie. It’s actually not _completely_ fabricated. He is, in fact, a “freelancer” with the Survey Corp., but more of the office temp persuasion.

“The headquarters is based here,” he continues. “That’s why I wanted to find somewhere where I can commute locally, instead of on the express train.”

She nods, seemingly satisfied by this explanation and turns around to unlock the front door to the building. Apparently there’s no elevator, and she leads him up the first flight of stairs.

“Of course, as you read, the unit is a fourth-floor walk-up. However, it’s fully equipped with a dishwasher and ample counter space, a large bedroom, and beautiful light.” She continues to list the merits of the apartment as they climb the stairs, and Jean can’t help but wonder if Marco took this same walk as he looked for a home after he and Jean split ways as roommates.

Marco had ended up with a job in Sina that sounded safe and boring, but that left him plenty of opportunity to send money home to his family and enjoy the sights and sounds of a big city. He’d always been curious about life outside Trost, and certainly outside when his family would make frequent trips home during holidays to Jinae; Sina was the ultimate goal.

“Mr. Kirschstein?”

Jean blinks, turning his gaze to focus on the real estate agent who’s standing in front of him in the hallway they’ve turned into. “Huh?”

“I said, is it a problem if there’s not bathtub? Only a standing shower.”

“Oh,” he grunts, clearing his throat, “not at all. I’m not really a bath person.”

She nods in approval. “Great. It’s not an amenity that people often request, but it is important to some.” There’s a rattle of keys as she turns to unlock the front door to the apartment, and Jean holds his breath as he watches her disappear inside before following.

The apartment is startlingly ordinary. Then again, Jean’s not sure what he was expecting. A ghost? The secrets of death to make themselves known upon entrance?

No, it’s just a regular apartment. Many of the surfaces have already been cleared off, the refrigerator door is ajar to let it defrost, and there are a few spaces against the wall where furniture once sat.

Jean just stares at the living room, dumbfounded. This is where Marco lived, ordinary as it might be.

The real estate agent doesn’t seem to find his reaction odd at all, though. “Breathtaking, isn’t it? Well, I’ll let you look around a bit. Don’t mind the things still here. The person who lived here passed away, and they’re in the process of removing remaining possessions.”

He nods, forces his voice to work. “Yeah, thank you. I’ll just look around a little.”

“I’ll be on the stairs returning a few client emails, if that’s all right with you,” she says. “Give you some time to truly get in touch with the space and see if it’s right.”

Jean forces the urge to roll his eyes. Tenants who prioritize “getting in touch with the space” over the price of rent are the types of people he tries to avoid associating with.

“Thanks, that’s great. I could definitely use sometime, to, um,” he says, “get in touch with the space.”

And with that, she nods and walks out into the hallway to attend to her own work, leaving the door ajar a few inches.

Jean immediately turns his gaze to the large empty pot on a wall-mounted shelf next to the entryway. It clearly hasn’t been touched, since the plant that was inside has long since withered and dried up.

He tries not to think about the fact that it died because its owner did, but makes a beeline for it anyway.

Marco is a creature of habit, and Jean is rewarded with his hunch being correct when he lifts the pot to find two keys underneath—what is obviously one to the building and one to the apartment.

When he reappears in the hallway, the agent is watching him attentively, obviously hoping for a successful outcome.

When he tells her he’s not in touch with the space, she looks shocked, but accepts the statement at face value.

The keys are quiet in his pocket, but weigh there heavily, his pass to finding the mundane every day bits of information he wants.

***

What Jean does that evening isn’t something he’d technically call “breaking in,” since that would insinuate the use of force or intended illegal activity.

It’s really the simple matter of unlocking the front door and acting as though he belongs there, hoping he doesn’t pass anyone in the hallway. When he finally closes Marco’s apartment door behind him, he lets out a sigh of relief.

Correction: Marco’s _former_ apartment, because Marco is dead.

Just the thought sobers him as he carefully clicks the deadbolt into place, hoping it’s not too loud to draw notice.

And finally, he’s there alone with the remainder of Marco’s belongings.

It feels like a tomb.

He starts with the most obvious place: the desk. It’s been mostly cleared of any obviously important papers that appear most commonly on desks—bills, personal correspondence, financial statements—no snapshot of whether or not Marco is the type of person to toss open mail to the side and forget it’s there.

Jean suspects not, though. Marco was always careful with his money, right up until the last time they saw each other face to face.

They’d met up a year after parting ways as roommates. It was an amicable split, but felt more like a rupture of circumstance as the months turned into a year; then years. Nonetheless, Jean still remembers their last conversation vividly.

_ “Hey, how’s life been?”_

_Marco looks up and studies him for a few beats of silence, then stares down into his drink. “It’s been okay. How’s Trost?”_

_“Weird, being back in the old places,” Jean snorts. “But it’s a lot more affordable.”_

_“I’m sorry you couldn’t stay.”_

_Jean shrugs and throws his hands behind his head irreverently. Their worlds had started to split apart a long time ago. He’d made peace with it, or tried._

_“Don’t apologize.”_

_“I’m not apologizing,” Marco replies, sounding frustrated as he runs his thumb up and down the side of his beer glass, streaking the condensation. “What I’m saying that I miss you.”_

_“Well,” Jean replies, clearing his throat, “that’s life, I guess.”_

_They both ignore the fact that Jean had kissed Marco goodbye with no explanation when he left to return to Trost, and he hadn’t given one since._

Then: one or two phone calls, sporadic emails and texts, a few postcards from when Marco went on vacation somewhere tropical, and then, one Christmas card that reached Jean late.

He sits down in the elegant office chair, obviously expensive and purchased from some upscale Sina shop, and opens the center desk drawer.

The first thing he finds is a box that formerly held twenty-five blank Christmas cards that bear the same pattern as his. Only now there are only twenty-two left.

There’s something about this that makes Jean upset, and he gently puts the box back into the drawer.

The remaining items there aren’t anything to make any conclusions about—too many paperclips, rubber bands, a box of unsharpened pencils.

Although one thing does catch Jean’s attention as he replaces everything in the drawer as he found it. It’s a crumpled piece of paper near the front, as if it’d fallen from the desktop and was never important enough to be noticed or retrieved.

As Jean plucks it out and smooths it out, his eyebrows raise as he reads a receipt tallying up a single, over-priced cup of coffee. There’s also a hand-written phone number, smiley face, and girl’s name Jean doesn’t know.

Marco’s sister had said he wasn’t interested in dating, and there certainly hadn’t been anyone at the funeral who was recognizable as a non-relative around their age.

The receipt is dated the third of January, three days before he was run over by a train. Jean can only muse whether or not he ever actually called.

He throws the receipt into the wastepaper basket since it seems silly to just put it back into the drawer like a fossil. All of these things are going to be cleaned out anyway, and they’re clearly of no value to anyone except him. He may as well be the one who decides their destiny in their final moments.

In some way, it seems precious even though it seems absurd.

Over the course of the next hour, he roots around in various drawers and cabinets, feeling very much like an intruder but also like a guest who didn’t need permission to enter in the first place.

It’s nearly two in the morning by the time he settles his head on the desk sleepily. It’s too late to leave without going undetected, and there’s certainly nowhere to rest, so he decides to let the desk be his pillow.

There’s something about the apartment he can’t seem to let go of. This seems silly given that he’s never even been here before, never even seen Marco within its confines when he was alive, hadn’t seen Marco at all for a very long time.

Yet, as he drifts off to sleep against the calendar blotter, the month forever remaining December, he feels strangely comfortable.

***

The first thing Jean registers when he wakes up is how cold it is. It makes sense since the heat has probably been turned off in the apartment, but it comes no less of a rude shock as Jean blinks blearily. He’s sure to have a crick in his neck by the time he boards the train back to Trost.

Forcing his limbs to work, he slowly straightens to stand up, his knees creaking. He really is getting old, he thinks derisively, before walking over to look out the window.

There’s a fresh snowfall that’s covered the streets of Sina and everything looks pristine, as if the world has been erased for just a morning.

For a moment, Jean simply stands there, staring out at the street below. No one is around yet since it’s still very early, dawn barely making itself known, and nothing has disturbed the quiet scene.

He thinks about how Marco must have looked out this very window many times, seen the seasons change for years here. All the years that Jean wishes he had stopped by, called, written—years he could’ve spent with Marco.

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, feeling even more tired than when he first fell asleep on the desk.

The sound of a drawer slamming noisily shoots adrenaline through his body as he spins on his heel, looking around wildly. There’s nothing there, just the same apartment he’s been in since the night before, cold and lonely, heat cut off.

But then he spots something different: an unsettling trail of wet footprints on the floor, as if someone had come in and failed to wipe their shoes after trudging through the ice and snow of last night’s weather pattern.

Jean’s hair immediately stands on end as he looks around wildly, striding over to check the deadbolt on the door. The uncanny feeling intensifies as he sees that it’s still locked, a solid piece of hardware that probably hasn’t been breached since the building was erected.

He slowly follows the direction of the footsteps and his breath catches. They abruptly stop at the desk, still no hint as to how they even got there. Then, he sees something on the blotter he’s sure wasn’t there before, something where his head _just_ was.

There’s a pen, cast down as if in a hurry, and a piece of paper.

Jean swallows hard, still looking around the room warily; his heart is pounding in his chest, but the cold no longer seems to be coming just from the lack of heat or the newly fallen snow outside.

He slowly approaches, unsure of what he’ll find.

And then his throat tightens and he inhales sharply as he sees the paper.

It’s the receipt from the wastepaper basket he’d discarded the night before, a hastily written message. He’d recognize Marco’s handwriting anywhere.

_Remember when we were kids? You loved the snow. It’s cold outside._

Jean strides up to the desk and grabs the crumpled receipt, smoothing it out as he reads it to himself in a whisper, then looks around wildly.

All he can conclude is that he must be hallucinating. He must be so stressed out, so overwhelmed, that his mind is making him see things now that aren’t real.

But the words stay there, not doing anything strange like floating off the paper in a dream or fading away. It’s as real as the winter daylight streaming through the window.

He pushes away the feeling of stupidity as he says softly, “Marco?”

It’s dumb really, how pathetic his voice sounds; maybe he really is having a nervous breakdown.

He has to get out of here. The apartment is driving him crazy and it’s a mausoleum. He should’ve never spent the night.

Jean seizes the pen and shoves it inside the desk drawer where it belongs, then strides toward the door and goes to yank it open. As he reaches into the pocket of his jeans, he realizes he doesn’t remember where he put the keys. Unless he wants to be charged with breaking and entering, regardless of circumstance, he’d better lock the door when he leaves.

He huffs in frustration, slowly backing away twisting back the deadbolt lest the noise rouse one of Marco’s more alert neighbors. The floor creaks under his shoes and he moves back toward the desk, and then he stops breathing as he sees another paper.

It’s a Christmas card, one of the blank ones he had seen in the box in the drawer the night before.

There it is, written in the same ink from the same pen that now lies on the blotter again: _I’m here._

“Shit,” Jean hisses, staring at the desk, frozen in place. He’s unsure of what to do, looking back and forth between the neat penmanship and the front door. “Am I hallucinating?” 

Halfway expecting an answer, he stands stock still, waiting. Nothing happens.

Feeling foolish—though a curl of something sharp and bright is unfurling in his chest—he slowly crosses the room back to the desk and picks up the pen. 

Hand shaking, he slowly writes: _Where are you?_ Clearly something is transpiring here that’s outside his understanding, so he’s going to run with it. What if he only gets one thing to say or ask Marco if he really is there, though? 

He chews his lip, frowning slightly until adding, _You got a hit by a train._

“Oh, so that’s what happened.”

Jean spins so quickly on his heel that the pen flies out of his hand and hits the floor, adrenaline coursing through him, heart pounding.

And there’s Marco, looking for all the world like it’s an average weekday and he’s just gotten home, wearing a heavy black coat.

“What the hell, Marco?!” Jean demands, his voice sliding up an octave. “What... are you...”

Marco cocks his head to the side curiously, looking around the apartment. “I’m here all the time,” he says, frowning mildly. “But I haven’t seen it like this yet. It’s kind of depressing.”

“Like what?” Jean asks, hysteria building in him. “Look like what? Are you—” He shakes his head in disbelief. “How are you...?”

“Jean, calm down,” Marco says firmly. And he sounds so like his old self, as if no time has passed at all, that Jean can’t stifle the visceral sob that erupts from him. He trips forward and wraps both arms around Marco, expecting them to swing through thin air. To his surprise, though, Marco is there, startlingly solid.

Marco is quiet for a moment before slowly bringing his arms up to return the embrace.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” he says quietly. His jacket is cold, as if he’s been outside, and Jean almost wants to go about warming him up until he realizes warmth probably doesn’t matter too much to Marco anymore.

“Neither am I,” Jean replies, but doesn’t pull away, tightening his arms.

Jean pushes his face against Marco’s shoulder. It’s bizarre—he even _smells_ the same.

“You waited long enough to visit.”

Jean lets out a choked laugh, shaking his head. There’s really nothing to say.

“What did you mean, you haven’t seen it like this yet?” he finally asks, pulling away to look Marco in the face. Each freckle, every angle, is familiar. Nothing has changed at all. He’s not sure whether to elated or devastated.

Marco sighs, and even his breath is warm. Jean starts to wonder if he dreamed this entire thing, but with a glance around the emptied apartment as they part, he knows it’s real.

“Well,” Marco says, shrugging off his coat and looking mystified, “it seems like whenever I come back from the train station, it’s snowing. It’s usually early in the morning, before anyone is around. The first time it happened, I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I just came home.” He absently reaches out and lets go of his coat which falls to the floor. There’s a mark on the wall where a row of pegs obviously used to be mounted.

He sighs, rolling his eyes as he picks the coat back up and gingerly drapes it over the back of the desk chair.

“They’re renting it out?” he guesses, surveying the room with a defeated expression before turning his gaze to Jean. “Does that mean I’m… stuck here?”

Jean just shakes his head at him, his mouth practically hanging open. “I don’t know how this works. I just know I’m happy to see you.”

Marco’s mouth quirks fractionally and he shrugs. “You always did ignore the things you didn’t want to deal with.”

Jean’s mouth snaps shut. The words are like a slap. Leave it to Marco to tell it like it is—albeit gently—even as a ghost. 

“Well,” he replies carefully, “tell me more about what you mean. You said that when you’re actually outside…” he stops, waiting for Marco’s acknowledgement. 

Marco nods vigorously, obviously as eager to figure this out as much as Jean.

“And you walk from the train station, and come here?” he continues, rubbing the back of his head thoughtfully. “Have you appeared to anyone else?”

Marco frowns in thought. “It always sort of seems like a dream or something,” he says. “But eventually, I figured out what was going on, especially because every time I’d get home, things were being moved out.”

“Did you see any of your family?” Jean asks, assuming the answer is no if Margit had never mentioned it.

Marco’s face falls. “No,” he says quietly. “I was hoping that one of the days I found myself walking home, I’d get to see Margit, or my parents, once I figured out that this was something that happened to me. But I never did.”

“But you see me.”

Marco nods slowly. “I think it might be… because we have unfinished business.”

Jean swallows hard. “Yeah,” he says simply. “Um, thanks for the Christmas card.”

“Is that why you came here?” Marco asks quietly. “Because of that?”

“I wanted to see…” Jean sighs. “I don’t know what I wanted to see. I didn’t know what I expected to see. I definitely didn’t think I’d be breaking and entering. And then meeting a ghost.”

Marco snorts at that and Jean waves his hands around. “I mean, not that I’m not really happy to be here!” His voice gets more quiet. “I am happy to be here.” He looks around the apartment curiously.

“I’m not sure if I’m actually a ghost.” Marco just shrugs a little. “I leave footsteps in the snow, when I leave the train station. People pass me, but no one has walked _through_ me anyway, like in the movies.”

Jean just shakes his head. “Well, what is this then. Are you going to disappear once we talk about what a fuck-up I am and agree on that fact and then that’ll be it?”

“Uh,” Marco says uncertainly, “I’m not sure.” He pauses for a moment, casting his eyes around the apartment warily. “I don’t want to go, not when you’re here now.” He meets Jean’s eyes again, puzzled. “Maybe that’s why I’m here… not to resolve things. Because I want to be. Even if I’m stuck in this form, whatever this is.”

“Have you been able to go anywhere else, walk anywhere else when you start from the train station?” Jean questions, suddenly attempting to formulate a totally implausible plan. But that’s never stopped him before.

“No,” Marco says definitively. “One time, I wanted to stop for coffee. I’m not sure if it was just habit or not, since I’m pretty sure I don’t need to eat or drink now, but when I tried to go into the shop I just… couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t?”

Marco shakes his head. “No… like, you know when you’re having one of those dreams where you try to stop and see something, but you just keep doing what you’re doing because you’re not in control? It was sort of like that. It was almost like I forgot to do it once I passed the place I used to go.”

“Huh,” Jean says. “Well, if you want coffee, I can get you coffee. Or you know, if you just want to smell it.” He raises an eyebrow. “You can smell, right? Because I can smell you.”

“I can smell you, too.” Marco looks away, his face conflicted. “It’s familiar.”

Jean sighs, turning to collapse back into the desk chair and cross his arms in exasperation. “So what are we supposed to do now? If you’re not a ghost who’s going to go off into the afterlife at peace because I admit I’m an idiot, and now I know you’re _here_ all the time.”

There’s a short silence, and Marco comes to lean on the desk next to Jean, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure eventually whatever is holding me here will give way. I _am_ dead.” 

“Don’t just say it like that,” Jean hisses, frowning but not shrugging Marco’s shoulder off. “I mean, okay, maybe you’re not dead. Not like the way where you’re _really_ dead. Maybe this is some… I don’t know, hippie-dippy cosmic shit. Maybe it’s like a second chance with some caveats, just to really make life miserable for us.”

“What are you saying?” Marco asks, sounding genuinely shocked.

“It’s too late for bullshit,” Jean declares, standing up to turn and face Marco, their faces mere inches away. “Actually, that’s the understatement of the century.”

He’s not sure if his intended gesture is going to work, but when he leans forward to kiss Marco, his lips are just as warm and real as Jean had imagined years ago.

And Marco leans into it, pulling Jean close before they part.

He laughs incredulously. It is a ridiculous situation.

“It took me getting hit by a train for you to kiss me?” Marco asks quietly. 

Jean laughs wryly, not letting go. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he says quietly, “but I’m going to say here with you as long as you’re around. We’ll figure out how your weird dream sequence train station walk works, and I’ll walk with you. I don’t care if I do it every morning.” He gestures toward the window. “It’s early and it snowed. No one is out yet. What if that’s part of it? What if we get to be the first ones to be there, before the rest of the world traipses over and things get muddy and real and dirty?”

“Someone is going to rent this place, Jean,” Marco says quietly. “That all sounds absolutely insane but also great… but—”

“I’ll rent it then.”

“Can you really afford it?”

Jean shrugs. “I don’t care. I’ll figure it out. I’ll take out a loan or something. I’ll ask one of our rich classmates for money.” He pulls Marco close. “I’ll put those pegs back up, and we can stay here together.”

“I thought I was supposed to gracefully fade away or something?” Marco questions.

“Well, that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, so fuck it.” Jean shakes his head fervently. “I made a mistake, losing touch all those years, not doing what I wanted to, not being brave enough to admit what I wanted. You were always the most important thing to me.” He sighs heavily. “And I blew it. Maybe this is like a second chance.”

“You’re going to date a ghost who seems to be stuck in an apartment that’s too expensive?” Marco asks.

Jean shrugs. “I’ve done crazier things.”

That earns a slight smile, but then Marco’s face shadows. “What happens if one day, I just disappear?”

“Well,” Jean says quietly, staring at Marco’s shoulder, “technically, that already happened. So if one day I wake up and you’re not here, I would’ve already had a test run.”

“That’s morbid.”

“That’s rich, coming from a ghost.”

They stare at each other. Marco shakes his head, closing the distance between them and wrapping his arms around Jean. He doesn’t say anything.

“If you had to go,” Jean hazards, know what he’s about to say won’t be taken well as he closes his eyes, “I’d go with you. I don’t want to be in this world without you.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have died. And I shouldn’t have waited. There’s a lot of ‘shouldn’t haves,’ but here we are.”

Marco finally breaks the embrace and steps back, studying Jean. “Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to see how you lived,” Jean replies. “I wanted to see what was in your desk drawer—or what was left in it anyway—the view from your window, the inside of your front door. Stuff like that. Stuff I should’ve seen a long time ago.”

There’s a short silence. Jean steps forward again and opens his arms, waiting. 

Marco steps forward and meets him halfway, resting his head against Jean’s shoulder.

Jean kisses him, whatever Marco is—some apparition or entity or nameless thing—but still undoubtedly Marco Bodt, his best friend, his missed opportunity.

“I’ll stay as long as you do.”

Jean nods. “Okay.”

***

The eight o’clock crashes and Jean with it on his way to work, the same train that crashed into Marco. The funeral is brief and there’s no fanfare, just as Jean wished.

When winter begins to settle and the ground is reliably frozen, Marco’s sister visits and smokes two cigarettes: one for Jean and one for her. She visits Marco too before leaving.

A few days later, she receives a Christmas card in the mail with no return address.

Inside, it says simply: _Thanks for visiting. Merry Christmas._ There’s some extra space, but then below, in a different color ink: _P.S. Thanks for the smokes._ Two sets of handwriting, both familiar.

She smiles through her tears.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a hot jeanmarco minute! But it was surprisingly easy to slide back into our boys. Thank you for reading. <3


End file.
